‘The Girl on the Train’ — Author on whirlwind ride with debut thriller

Vicki Bennington, For The Telegraph

Published
10:34 pm CDT, Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Paula Hawkins, author of “The Girl on the Train,” while sitting on a train with an urban view that might be close to what the protagonist in the story witnessed on a daily basis. For The Telegraph

Paula Hawkins, author of “The Girl on the Train,” while sitting on a train with an urban view that might be close to what the protagonist in the story witnessed on a daily basis. For The Telegraph

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Paula Hawkins, author of “The Girl on the Train,” while sitting on a train with an urban view that might be close to what the protagonist in the story witnessed on a daily basis. For The Telegraph

Paula Hawkins, author of “The Girl on the Train,” while sitting on a train with an urban view that might be close to what the protagonist in the story witnessed on a daily basis. For The Telegraph

‘The Girl on the Train’ — Author on whirlwind ride with debut thriller

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You never know who might be watching you, even when you are literally, in your own backyard.

The premise of the hot No. 1 New York Times best seller, “The Girl on the Train” by Paula Hawkins, centers on a voyeuristic train journey that Rachel Watson takes twice a day. She used to ride the train to work, and still continues to ride it after losing her job so her roommate will not find out she’s been fired. She fills her own lonely life with observations of other people’s lives as she watches them day after day through the train window.

It didn’t start out “creepy,” but the freshly divorced, lonely woman soon found herself looking forward to seeing certain people that she feels she has come to know though they have no idea they are being observed.

She even views the house she once lived in with her ex-husband, who now lives there with his new wife, Anna, and their new baby. Ouch.

Just down the road from her old house, she zeros in on one couple in particular who she often sees eating breakfast on their deck. She assigns them names (in her head). She fills in the blanks about their seemingly happy life to compensate for her own loneliness, the loss of her marriage, no job and no real home of her own. Plus, her drinking is out of control.

All this makes for a bad mix, especially when you throw in a disappearance — or is it murder? Rachel feels sure she has witnessed something wrong in what she thought was the happy existence of her “watched” couple. At first she thinks the wife is up to no good, but subsequent events make her unsure.

While she thinks she might be able to help the police, at the same time, Rachel can’t quite remember what happened or even what she did or did not see due to one of her alcohol-induced blackouts.

Her self-propelled involvement in the couple’s lives, along with her reluctance to let go of her ex-husband and his new family seem to confuse her and escalate her own already monumental problems.

Three narrators take readers through the mysterious twists and turns — Rachel, Anna and Megan (the woman who disappears) alternate chapters in different timelines. You need to pay attention to who is talking when with each chapter.

It’s a book that is hard to put down with the compelling need to find out what’s next, though it’s difficult to feel sympathy for Rachel.

With more than two million copies sold, it’s striking a chord with somebody. Dreamworks Pictures will release the movie version in October, starring Emily Blunt as Rachel.

The idea for the story came to Hawkins from the days when she rode a commuter train herself, and she sat and wondered what would happen if she saw a crime take place.

Hawkins was born in Zimbabwe, and moved to London with her parents in 1989. She attended Oxford and worked as a journalist for 15 years. She wrote four romance novels under the name Amy Silver. She is also the author of “Money Goddess: The Financial Guide for Women,” and is currently writing another psychological thriller — this one about sisters and memories.